


Lost Moonlight

by Parachutes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Homesickness, Keith doing his best, M/M, because that's what I like best yo, cheesy fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7789489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parachutes/pseuds/Parachutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Lance could only stare at the ceiling, while the scene replayed itself again and again and again on the white paint. He always needed a few minutes, sometimes even hours, to calm down after this happened. Yes, always. Because it was not as if he was seeing this dream for the first time. They had started only a few days after he became part of team Voltron. They were always the same, but the terrible fear they created never faded away. Every time was like he was living the scene for the first time. Too weak to save the Earth, too weak to save the one thing that was important to him, too weak to save his family."</p>
<p>In which Lance suffers from nightmares and Keith notices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> Heyaaa~  
> Lately I've been very insecure about my writing, so this is a thing I've written quite a while ago. The concept has probably been done like 100 times orso, but I still needed to write it because I'm in Voltron and Klance hell. c: Expect some more (original) Klance shit later~ In the meantime I hope you'll enjoy ^w^  
> Oh, feedback is always welcome!

The sky had turned dark red, and the Earth was burning. Hundreds of thousands of people desperately tried to move towards something, somewhere, with no place in mind, only the concept of safety. They were screaming, and their voices mixed and mingled into a huge mess of undefinable chaos, invading Lance’s ears and head and mind. He only half noticed he was piloting his lion, flying worse than ever, forcing himself to only think of the faces he was trying to find, but it was impossible to block out the rest of the world. The screaming was terrible, and it was like they were all demanding his attention, _save me save me save me_ but Lance couldn’t, he couldn’t save them all. But they had lives and families and love, and they were throwing all their feeling right at him and he was falling, falling into the depths of despair. _He needed to find them. His father, his mother, his siblings_. But how? How could he possibly find them in this awful crowd of dying people when his vision was clouded with tears of frustration? He could hear himself screaming, a painful, inhuman sound and he was afraid he was going mad – _oh god he didn’t belong here, not in this world of agony and death and despair – not in this terrible world of war_.

And just then – he saw them. His mother, holding both his younger brother and sister tight, shielding them from whatever was about to happen to them. His older siblings were scattered around them along with his grandparents, and his father was in front of them all. Lance found himself wondering why they weren’t running, why they were not trying to get to a safe place like all the screaming voices around him and even before he could try to find any answers – he saw.

Zarkon in front of them, raising his right arm. His siblings crying, his mother shivering but never letting them go. His father screaming, his grandparents closing their eyes. And he screamed and struggled and demanded his lion to _move, move MOVE_ but the blue lion didn’t do anything but make him watch his family stumble to their knees and bleed, colouring the whole damn world blood red and Zarkon was laughing out loud and the sound burned into his soul as he screamed –

himself awake, covered with sweat or tears or both. His heart bounced awfully fast, and it _hurt_. It hurt so much he was almost scared something was wrong with him. Lance could only stare at the ceiling, while the scene replayed itself again and again and again on the white paint. He always needed a few minutes, sometimes even hours, to calm down after this happened. Yes, always. Because it was not as if he was seeing this dream for the first time. They had started only a few days after he became part of team Voltron. They were always the same, but the terrible fear they created never faded away. Every time was like he was living the scene for the first time. Too weak to save the Earth, too weak to save the one thing that was important to him, too weak to save _his family_. Feeling numb, he threw away his blankets and pushed himself up in a sitting position, just before he made his bare feet touch the cold ground he was hardly able to feel. His legs carried him through the ship, wandering towards a place he would never be able to reach.

 

Keith’s eyes flew open suddenly, as he was pushed out of his sleep by a scream coming from one of the rooms near his. It didn’t take long to figure out what was going on, since he was a very light sleeper and these past few days, he was awakened by the sound of Lance’s screams almost every night. He didn’t know whether he was the only one who noticed, but so far no one had mentioned it to the blue lion’s paladin, and he hadn’t either. Usually he just waited for a while until the screaming stopped and he was certain Lance had calmed down, before trying to find sleep again. However, right now, something was different, since he could hear soft footsteps on the floor and a door opening and closing again. Did he go outside? Absently, Keith remembered hearing this a few times before, and lying awake for hours until he heard the reassuring sound of the door again. He remembered his passive frustration, wanting to do something but restraining himself by pride. He had been torn between his boiling wish to just do something and his stupid worries, and had ended up regretting it even when Lance did safely return in the end. Tonight, he was done with that. So before his chaotic thoughts could start arguing against each other, Keith put on his jacket and left the room, following whatever direction he thought Lance had taken.

The corridors of the ship were pretty cold at night, he noticed as he felt the air stroking his cheeks. And pretty dark – he had to carefully move himself forward so he wouldn’t walk into a wall on accident. It all created a lonely atmosphere, and Keith couldn’t imagine Lance would calm down after spending some time in such a desolate place. At least, he didn’t feel calm at all, wandering through this emptiness. It didn’t take long to find the other paladin – after some time he could identify a silhouette curled up on the ground, and when he moved closer he saw Lance was hugging his knees, while his head was resting on them. He looked so small and alone Keith felt a pang of compassion shooting through his body. It also made him pause, however, because he had no clue how to face him – what to say, what to do? He was no good at this. Why on EARTH did he decide to follow Lance with his stupid brain? For a few seconds he was just standing there, staring at the motionless body in front of him, and then he decided there was no way back anymore.

Lance didn’t notice Keith at all, until the dark haired boy spoke. ‘Lance.’ It was only his name, nothing more, nothing less, but it made him jump and quickly he lifted his head, searching for the source of the voice. When their eyes met, a little longer than normally, since they were both a little confused and taken by surprise, Keith found himself absently searching for tears, but couldn’t find any – yet. The other boy definitely looked like he could cry though. After staring at each other in confusion for some time, Lance immediately tried to throw away that sadness, but it seemed futile to Keith.

‘Keith!’ he called out, while jumping to his feet – and almost falling back against the wall. ‘What are you doing here? Can’t sleep HUH? I bet you’re worried about the fact that I’m the best paladin and will get all the ladies and –’ He babbled on a bit more, but his words didn’t make any sense and he was talking way too fast for the other to follow. He watched Lance talking and noticed he wasn’t looking at him even once; he avoided his gaze at all cost as his eyes wandered everywhere and he was all over the place.

‘… and I swear in a few days I’m also gonna be better at fighting I mean have you watched me train? Whew I’m doing gooood man, so good and I know Allura has been watching me to you know, it’ll only be a matter of days before we –’

Keith decided that was enough. ‘Can you just… shut up and sit down?’ he called out, a little more annoyed than he intended. The guy was just… really getting on his nerves with his pointless talking, while he was struggling with how to talk to him about his nightmares.

It worked, though, as Lance immediately stopped talking. He stared at the other paladin for a bit. ‘… what you wanna fight?’

‘No I DON’T,’ Keith said. ‘Just sit down and be honest with me.’

The forced expressions on the blue paladin’s face were starting to soften a little bit, but only a little.

‘What, we’re gonna have a talk about girls? You and me?’

He snapped. ‘NO! Can you shut up for a minute? I need to talk to you. I’ve been hearing you… scream at night.’ He immediately regretted being so direct, since Lance’s facial expression became complicated, and he kind of looked like he wanted to disappear from the world, right now, right there.

‘… oh,’ he let out, not capable of arguing with Keith anymore. That’s it. Keith of all people was the one who noticed, the one who now knew of his weaknesses – the person who was his sworn rival. He would definitely laugh at him and tell the others so it was out in the open. Could they even still be rivals? He’d never be able to shoot things back at him whenever Keith would bring this up…

Only he did not laugh. He spoke again, and his voice was soft. ‘Go… sit down, I uh, I’m not good at this, but talk to me.’

‘Huuuh? First you want me to shut up then you want me to talk to you? What is your problem dude?’

Before he realized, Lance had called out and when he found Keith staring at him he could feel his cheeks burning red. It got worse when a bright smile appeared on his fellow paladin’s face, and he was unable to look away even though he wanted to.

‘Good, you’re back to normal,’ Keith said. ‘Now talk. Be honest.’ There was a weird nervousness flittering through his stomach – he still didn’t know if he was doing the right thing by forcing Lance to talk, and he was unsure about which words to use since he had never been good at talking anyways, but he had a feeling it would be alright. He knew how to listen.

Lance lowered himself against the wall again, falling back in his sitting position from before, and from the corner of his eyes he saw Keith sitting down next to him. He sighed – there was nothing he could do to prevent this anymore, better just tell him everything and hope for the best.

‘I.. .won’t ask you not to laugh at me, but please don’t tell the others,’ he started and eyed the other carefully before continuing. Keith shot him a glance that was almost offended - why would he laugh at him? – and then nodded.

‘Well then. I’ve been having nightmares about losing my family, almost since the one day we started the whole Voltron thing. We’re on Earth – Zarkon is destroying it. I’m there in my lion searching for my family. People are everywhere, blood everywhere and then…’

The blue lion’s paladin was shivering, and Keith couldn’t help but stare at the paleness of his face, the fear in his deep blue eyes. He almost regretted pulling the story out of him.

‘You cold?’ he asked.

‘Huh?’ Lance stopped, only noticing that yes, he was, he was terribly cold in this dark corridor of a home where he didn’t belong. He violently blinked his incomplete tears away.

Keith took his jacket off and pushed it in Lance’s hands before he could realize what he was doing and quickly averted his gaze as he could feel his cheeks burning with the realization. ‘I don’t need it,’ he said. ‘Continue.’

As he put the jacket on with quivering hands Lance couldn’t help but stare at his fellow paladin who was nervously pulling at his hair. It created a small bulb of happiness in his heart he didn’t really want to understand, but it made him smile a little anyway. Also, the jacket was warm and smelled like Keith. He let out a sigh, remembering his nightmare and continued. ‘And then I find them. The world is falling apart, Zarkon is killing everything and everyone and then I see him… in front of my family. I want to save them but my lion doesn’t listen to me. It just ignores me. I want to move but it doesn’t move. I want to shoot but it doesn’t shoot. I want to scream but I can only watch Zarkon killing them all… one by one… There’s blood everywhere… And he’s laughing, like a mad man. I can still hear his laugh right now, it’s feels so real…’

‘It’s okay buddy, that’s enough,’ his voice was so soft that Lance almost wanted him to keep talking forever. Only when Keith slowly put his hand on his shoulder, causing Lance to look at him, he realized he was actually crying and he tried to shake the hand away, burry his face in his arms because he couldn’t be weak, not in front of his friends, and not in front of _Keith_ of all people. How could they ever be rivals again when he… showed himself crying? It didn’t work, however, because the tears weakened his power, probably, or because Keith was stronger anyways, or maybe… because he didn’t really want to win this tiny battle.

‘It’s okay,’ Keith said again and as he softly squeezed his shoulder, all sorts of feelings fluttered through Lance’s body, and unable to define them all anymore, he broke.

‘I want to see my family, Keith…’ he softly said, his voice small and broken. ‘I want to go home…’

‘I know, Lance, we all do. And that’s okay. No need to feel shame.’

Keith’s eyes widened as the other boy let his head fall on his shoulder, face down. He watched absently how the sleeve of his shirt slowly got wet. Some weird, tingling feeling made him want to touch the other boy – to softly wipe the tears from his cheeks, even stroke his hair… maybe… But he forced himself to look away in order not to make it even more awkward, and just let Lance cry against his shoulder without a word.

‘I do, though,’ he let out. ‘I made you my rival how can I face you again now?’

‘We’re also friends,’ Keith heard himself say. ‘So it’s okay.’

A silence formed itself, but it was not an unpleasant one. It felt… safe. They were in a cold, dark corridor on a ship, countless miles from home, but they were together.

After some time, Lance moved himself away from Keith a little and quickly wiped his face. ‘Thanks,’ he said, the smile on his face was both honest and shy, and Keith felt himself staring at it, intrigued.

‘You know what I miss the most?’ the blue lion paladin asked, his gaze focused far in the distance. Keith didn’t know.

‘Watching the stars and the moon with my younger brother and sister. We always do that when we are unable to sleep you know. My sister always ends up falling asleep anyways, but my brother and I… we’ve always been attracted by the light of the full moon. It’s so mysterious, so big, so far away, so lonely, yet so soothing. Here, I can’t see the Earth’s moon… But when I close my eyes…’ Keith watched him do it and followed his example automatically. ‘… I can see it. And I know then that I’m not alone.’ He could hear in his voice that Lance was smiling – good. ‘Can you see it?’ Lance asked.

And after some time, he could. The big bright white light of the moon, shining as a source of hope in an endless darkness of loneliness. And he thought of Earth… of his family, of how long he hadn’t seen them and how much he missed them. But they were living their own lives, waiting for him to return one day. In the meantime, he wasn’t alone – he’d never be alone.

As if agreeing with him, he could feel Lance’s warmth against his shoulder again, and Keith opened his eyes to find his friend had fallen asleep. Good. A smile was teasing his lips, but Keith didn’t care. He carefully lifted Lance on his back – trying hard not to wake him up again now that he was finally sleeping peacefully. Luckily, he didn’t wake up and Keith was able to carry him all the way back to his room.

As he softly lowered him on his bed, impulses once again took hold of him and he couldn’t even think before he had already kissed Lance softly on his cheek. When he moved away from him, however, panic overcame him and he almost tripped while leaving the room to go back to his own bed. As he opened and closed the door to his own room he let out a sigh, rubbing his face as if that would make the deep blush teasing his cheeks go away.

_I’m going to kill you if you’re not gonna remember this bonding moment either, idiot._


End file.
